"Mediocre people do exceptional things all the time."
-- OK Go, "What To Do"
--
In one week: the car broke down, worse than expected, and has to be sacked for a new one; headshots fell through; the paycheck from the theatre was almost a week late and we're all supposed to smile about it. Bad things come in fucking threes.
But the headshots will be done today, for a fee. The paycheck came through, too. So all that's left is a somewhat harried and clueless search for a new car, or rather, a new used car, one that has at least six months left in it. Get me to Chicago, strange automobile, that's all I ask.
Craigslist had a few nice entries for used vehicles up for cheaps, but many of them need engines.
--
Yesterday all three crises hit me like the perfect storm. More accurately, they were three brushfires that converged on my little log cabin of life, and what's a guy to do when he's stuck in the misty mountains with fire all around? You breathe in that smoke, of course, let it burn your lungs and taint your blood, and you fire back with song.
Stupider, weaker and unluckier people have made it through worse things than this. And some of them are on TV now, or work in really cool factories, making blankets and watches for some really important people, or you know, smoking pot or something. And if all else fails, there's always Obama's casual, convenient unemployment aid--fuel for the pity fire that burns always within.
Solution? "Let power go before control becomes a crust around your soul," as Michael Card put it. And look to the dog for inspiration.
--
This morning, just before I called the photo studio, Ajax made his way into my room, tongue hanging out like floppy red candy. There is so much junk on my floor that his way was uncertain as he picked and poked his steps that took him nearer to my bed. His tail was a lunatic pendulum. Uncertain of his footing, he merely tensed at the foot of the bed, staring at that corner landing zone, measuring the leap in his tiny dog mind. He looked back at me. "Go on," I said. He wiggled his haunches and sprung--and didn't make it: a clawing, clutching, clumsy failure. He tried again, this time landing claws into the fitted sheet, pricking three little holes in a semi-circle to mark his attempt. "Come on!" I said, this time thumping a pillow. Without thinking, he shot upward and landed on his feet on the bed, and his face pulsed with success. The tongue came back out, sweet victory on the pallet, and the tail became electro-shock.
Aim, jump, land on your feet. The fires bring with them amazing drafts; spread a chute and ride the air.
12.31.2008
12.29.2008
Dillard
"We’re all in this wretched business together."
-- Annie Dillard, in an interview with Malcolm Lawrence in 1982
--
Just a quip before bed, in tribute. The world needs more people like Annie Dillard, American literature needs more writers like her, and colleges need more students and professors like her. The meek shall inherit the earth, and sometimes, they will have the gift of words, too: Humans willing to write.
Churches could use more believers like her, too: Believers willing to see.
A few links of note: Lunch, ambivalence, and a soccer mom. A slow, pedantic read of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is worth the extra time, too: Readers willing to read.
Also, her introduction to her website is among the best I've seen: http://www.anniedillard.com/.
-- Annie Dillard, in an interview with Malcolm Lawrence in 1982
--
Just a quip before bed, in tribute. The world needs more people like Annie Dillard, American literature needs more writers like her, and colleges need more students and professors like her. The meek shall inherit the earth, and sometimes, they will have the gift of words, too: Humans willing to write.
Churches could use more believers like her, too: Believers willing to see.
A few links of note: Lunch, ambivalence, and a soccer mom. A slow, pedantic read of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is worth the extra time, too: Readers willing to read.
Also, her introduction to her website is among the best I've seen: http://www.anniedillard.com/.
12.28.2008
Balk
"How can an old world be so innocent?"
-- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
--
Mom asked me to get the paper a few minutes ago. It's dark outside, and cold--such a late winter night. Ajax saw my purpose as I shoved my feet into my sneakers, and he started whimpering and hopping with anticipation, like a kid in the backseat when the car gets close to the amusement park. So I had him sit at the screen door, a lesson in patience, and then with one grand motion flung open the door and hissed, "Come on, let's go!" He shot out of the warm house into the dark, frozen grass.
I must have thought he knew I only meant to walk to the end of the driveway and return; I put on my shoes only, no coat or scarf. He began to run circles around me as I jogged back, teeth chattering, to the front door, and when he saw I was in no mood to play, he gave up on me and ran to the sidewalk across the lawn. He paused only to look back at me, a kind of smile on his furry face. "Come on, let's go!" he seemed to say. We had switched roles: Now, he, holding me in place and asking me to go; now, me, stuck until his whims aligned with mine.
So I dropped the paper in its tight plastic sack and made for him, dropping to all fours in the icy grass, grassy ice, snarling and snorting joyously for the winter. I darted left; he countered to his left; I faked right, he balked to his left and shot between my feet. The two of us were boxers on the lawn, dueling without gloves or contact, I the aggressor and he the underdog, I the trapper, he the squirrel.
And then, on the grass in the hostility of night, Ajax squatted, his tender belly settling on bristling blades, his skin feeling the microscopic ice through the young thin wisps of hair. He stared at me, his eyes beaded in the light from the porch, pinpricks of white firing back from his retinas. I stared at him, a looming silhouette, the essence of the house (the posh cage, playground and dungeon for darlings and dogs). We panted, each considering the other.
Then I turned, retrieved the paper. He stayed on the grass, paws down, wondering if I meant it, one set of legs twitching to follow, the other set planted, wanting to sprint with the domesticated half of his brain--all potty training and cheap tricks--but feeling the tug of a different leash from mine.
We went inside.
-- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
--
Mom asked me to get the paper a few minutes ago. It's dark outside, and cold--such a late winter night. Ajax saw my purpose as I shoved my feet into my sneakers, and he started whimpering and hopping with anticipation, like a kid in the backseat when the car gets close to the amusement park. So I had him sit at the screen door, a lesson in patience, and then with one grand motion flung open the door and hissed, "Come on, let's go!" He shot out of the warm house into the dark, frozen grass.
I must have thought he knew I only meant to walk to the end of the driveway and return; I put on my shoes only, no coat or scarf. He began to run circles around me as I jogged back, teeth chattering, to the front door, and when he saw I was in no mood to play, he gave up on me and ran to the sidewalk across the lawn. He paused only to look back at me, a kind of smile on his furry face. "Come on, let's go!" he seemed to say. We had switched roles: Now, he, holding me in place and asking me to go; now, me, stuck until his whims aligned with mine.
So I dropped the paper in its tight plastic sack and made for him, dropping to all fours in the icy grass, grassy ice, snarling and snorting joyously for the winter. I darted left; he countered to his left; I faked right, he balked to his left and shot between my feet. The two of us were boxers on the lawn, dueling without gloves or contact, I the aggressor and he the underdog, I the trapper, he the squirrel.
And then, on the grass in the hostility of night, Ajax squatted, his tender belly settling on bristling blades, his skin feeling the microscopic ice through the young thin wisps of hair. He stared at me, his eyes beaded in the light from the porch, pinpricks of white firing back from his retinas. I stared at him, a looming silhouette, the essence of the house (the posh cage, playground and dungeon for darlings and dogs). We panted, each considering the other.
Then I turned, retrieved the paper. He stayed on the grass, paws down, wondering if I meant it, one set of legs twitching to follow, the other set planted, wanting to sprint with the domesticated half of his brain--all potty training and cheap tricks--but feeling the tug of a different leash from mine.
We went inside.
12.26.2008
Poison
"And what kind of god would serve this?
We will cure this dirty old disease
If you've got the poison I've got the remedy...
I won't worry my life away."
-- Jason Mraz, "The Remedy"
--
Ajax got into some chocolate yesterday, which was Christmas. After presents and in the middle of Wii-ing, my sister came down the stairs with the dog in her arms. He had brown all over his paws and mouth and, you guessed it, a shit-eating grin on his face.
Chocolate is bad for dogs. It's poisonous to them because it contains theobromine, which comes from the Greek word for "food of the gods." It is colorless and insoluble, a bitter spectre seeking canines, found in the cacao plant. Theobromine molecules jump-start a dog, making him hyper and making him pee more, and over-zapping his heart and central nervous system. Not only that, but once a dog has eaten chocolate, he wants more and more, like lions who taste human blood. So far, the only noticeable change in Ajax's behavior is that he seems to be rubbing his rump on the carpet more often, which in the past (I am told) means he's just constipated. Fortunately, another symptom of chocolate poisoning is outlandish diarrhea--by which I mean gratuitous, vulgar, unbecoming amounts of it--so I think he's going to be okay. As long as he doesn't run off and kill a bunch of sheep (read about the Trojan War).
Ajax is not a man; he is a pet, and when he went unnoticed unto an old garbage bag sitting sentry in the kitchen, he was at the mercy of his own appetites and our carelessness. Voracity for the sweet stuff, a primordial craving for the forbidden, a stomach's longing to destroy itself from within--this drove the little fluffy thing mad, and into the thin plastic bag he went, panting.
--
Speaking of appetites, presents of note:
- An mp3 player, already fully loaded with 4GB of road tunes
- A 3-cup rice cooker
- A GPS
--
On Christmas Eve, the sisters and I had to make a last-minute purchase, a gift card at a swashbuckling Japanese restaurant in the northwest of O-Town. On our way to Kobe's, we stopped at a red light and when the light turned green and I pushed for gas, nothing happened; the car had stalled. After some clicking hesitation, the car awoke and we continued. Five minutes later, on the highway between I-680 and Dodge, the car hunkered down again. After another cursing restart, we sputtered forth another mile or two before it gave us another scare, this one worse than the others, because we had broken down on a road with the skinniest of shoulders. We let it sit for ten minutes before it groaned to life once more, and we were able to pull into the parking lot of the restaurant. We went in to buy the gift and waited an hour for our parents to rescue us from the empty shopping center, which was closing early for the holiday. And, naturally, the gift card itself was for my mother, who would be in the van, the warm, angelic white van, wondering why we were at this restaurant when we had told her we were going to the mall.
After the twelve-hour drive, it felt like the winds and witches of December were conspiring against my Christmas. But I guess we all need a heavy dose of chocolate sometimes, that cap for our pride. We want what we want, and what we want is so much of us, our plastic bags and boxes of technology, the bragging rights of all history. Stables, see the houses; buggies, see the cars; dogs, see the people, sipping hot cocoa and eating dark sweets.
And us, we see our presents, built to serve us and to outlast us, wanting them for ourselves but knowing we will throw them away, sell them, or forget about them in our wills. What kind of god would serve this? None. Glad, then: For it does not serve, this kind of god, and nor does this kind of dog. We should serve, always and with charity, only eating the crumbs from the master's table, the chance leftovers of the food of the gods.
We will cure this dirty old disease
If you've got the poison I've got the remedy...
I won't worry my life away."
-- Jason Mraz, "The Remedy"
--
Ajax got into some chocolate yesterday, which was Christmas. After presents and in the middle of Wii-ing, my sister came down the stairs with the dog in her arms. He had brown all over his paws and mouth and, you guessed it, a shit-eating grin on his face.
Chocolate is bad for dogs. It's poisonous to them because it contains theobromine, which comes from the Greek word for "food of the gods." It is colorless and insoluble, a bitter spectre seeking canines, found in the cacao plant. Theobromine molecules jump-start a dog, making him hyper and making him pee more, and over-zapping his heart and central nervous system. Not only that, but once a dog has eaten chocolate, he wants more and more, like lions who taste human blood. So far, the only noticeable change in Ajax's behavior is that he seems to be rubbing his rump on the carpet more often, which in the past (I am told) means he's just constipated. Fortunately, another symptom of chocolate poisoning is outlandish diarrhea--by which I mean gratuitous, vulgar, unbecoming amounts of it--so I think he's going to be okay. As long as he doesn't run off and kill a bunch of sheep (read about the Trojan War).
Ajax is not a man; he is a pet, and when he went unnoticed unto an old garbage bag sitting sentry in the kitchen, he was at the mercy of his own appetites and our carelessness. Voracity for the sweet stuff, a primordial craving for the forbidden, a stomach's longing to destroy itself from within--this drove the little fluffy thing mad, and into the thin plastic bag he went, panting.
--
Speaking of appetites, presents of note:
- An mp3 player, already fully loaded with 4GB of road tunes
- A 3-cup rice cooker
- A GPS
--
On Christmas Eve, the sisters and I had to make a last-minute purchase, a gift card at a swashbuckling Japanese restaurant in the northwest of O-Town. On our way to Kobe's, we stopped at a red light and when the light turned green and I pushed for gas, nothing happened; the car had stalled. After some clicking hesitation, the car awoke and we continued. Five minutes later, on the highway between I-680 and Dodge, the car hunkered down again. After another cursing restart, we sputtered forth another mile or two before it gave us another scare, this one worse than the others, because we had broken down on a road with the skinniest of shoulders. We let it sit for ten minutes before it groaned to life once more, and we were able to pull into the parking lot of the restaurant. We went in to buy the gift and waited an hour for our parents to rescue us from the empty shopping center, which was closing early for the holiday. And, naturally, the gift card itself was for my mother, who would be in the van, the warm, angelic white van, wondering why we were at this restaurant when we had told her we were going to the mall.
After the twelve-hour drive, it felt like the winds and witches of December were conspiring against my Christmas. But I guess we all need a heavy dose of chocolate sometimes, that cap for our pride. We want what we want, and what we want is so much of us, our plastic bags and boxes of technology, the bragging rights of all history. Stables, see the houses; buggies, see the cars; dogs, see the people, sipping hot cocoa and eating dark sweets.
And us, we see our presents, built to serve us and to outlast us, wanting them for ourselves but knowing we will throw them away, sell them, or forget about them in our wills. What kind of god would serve this? None. Glad, then: For it does not serve, this kind of god, and nor does this kind of dog. We should serve, always and with charity, only eating the crumbs from the master's table, the chance leftovers of the food of the gods.
12.24.2008
Blizzard
"Blinding snow everywhere. I do not know where I am."
-- Mr. Paravicini, in Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap
--
Been almost a month. No apologies--I've been busy, too on-the-go for a stop-and-look. You can't reconcile writing about life when the specks of it are flying all around you. That's like asking the tornado where it came from as it shreds the field, scars tree on tree; or like Job, boiled and troubled, getting a divine interview as the mountains crack behind him. No.
We toured A Christmas Carol for three solid weeks after Thanksgiving, setting up and performing two to three shows a day, seven days a week. No breaks. No days off. No reprieve, and no chance to ponder. Do, do, do. Real life skated by in tendrils, leaving trails for me to follow as I tried to focus on my work. I wanted to stop and stare at statues but the museum guard yanked my arm, pulling me to more galleries, ordering me to keep pushing the images into my head. Some statues, frozen in my head, now come back to me, relics of the last insane three weeks:
Indiana slush in a small town's motel, a smoking room with three beds and three ashtrays beside the beds, a last warrior for sleepy smokers. Chicken for dinner, with bouillon-steeped rice and twice-cooked potatoes (a first for yours truly), veggies galore. Champagne corks slamming my fist through the protective dishrag, fiery bubbles searing throats, drunk eyes smiling. A sea of fifty incontinent children in special reclining wheelchairs (more like wheelbeds), each with an overweight, stressed attendant at the elbow, these attendants dressed like receptionists at a dental office, the children writhing and seizing against the straps without knowing Scrooge or the ghosts, without even knowing themselves or the world that attacks them, and the actors, playing in front of a ratty backdrop of brick and marker, their eyes darting at each unknown sound of human voices screaming at the dark of existence. Exchanging secret Santa gifts in the van before our last show, gladly giving, gladly receiving.
Secret Santas in a van. The moment in December--for me, anyway--when a Christmas carol first leapt, uninvited but welcome, into my head; the first waking of the Christmas spirit. A gift after gifts.
--
Listened to Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury, yesterday. Afternoon, evening, midnight, finally crossing the bridge into Nebraska. Got caught in the snowy shit, the coldest and worst of storms I've ever encountered in a car: three hours to leave Chicago, an hour stopped on the ice behind semi trucks and completely stuffed cars,
(knowing they, too, are going home for christmas because of the mountain of presents stuffing the back seat, suitcases on boxes and cases and satchels, university bumper stickers and angry youthful faces glaring over scarves)
wondering why we all decided to drive on the day before the eve before the day of Christmas, and then another hour rolling at thirty miles an hour behind a duo of snowplows scraping and salting along both lanes on the highway. An awful drive--a seven-hour trip turned into a twelver--but I made it home finally, charged my ailing phone, and fell asleep for the length of the drive.
And, after all, still surprised my parents.
--
Merry Christmas.
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